Methods and Systems for Determining Image Processing Operations Relevant to Particular Imagery

• US 20110244919A1
• Filed: 06/23/2010
• Published: 10/06/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 03/19/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Digimar Corporation
• Original Assignee: Digimar Corporation
• Inventors: Aller, Joshua V., Rodriguez, Tony F.
• Granted Patent: US 8,660,355 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/556.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 18/21 Design or setup of recognition systems or techniques; Extraction of features in feature space; Blind source separation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0281 Customer communication at a business location, e.g. providing product or service information, consulting
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/94 Hardware or software architectures specially adapted for image or video understanding
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/168 Feature extraction; Face representation

Abstract

Image data, such as from a mobile phone camera, is analyzed to determine a colorfulness metric (e.g., saturation) or a contrast metric (e.g., Weber contrast). This metric is then used in deciding which of, or in which order, plural different image recognition processes should be invoked in order to present responsive information to a user. A great number of other features and arrangements are also detailed.

Claims

1. A method comprising the acts:

analyzing received image data to determine a colorfulness metric or a contrast metric; and

using said determined metric in deciding which of, or in which order, plural different image recognition processes should be applied to image data captured by a mobile phone camera, in order to present information derived from different types of imagery to a user from the mobile phone.

2. The method of claim 1 that includes applying an image recognition process in accordance with said deciding act.

3. The method of claim 1 that that includes applying a barcode reading function, an optical character recognition function, a facial recognition function, and/or a watermark decoding function as a consequence of said deciding.

4. The method of claim 1 that that includes applying a barcode reading function as a consequence of said deciding.

5. The method of claim 1 that that includes applying an optical character recognition function as a consequence of said deciding.

6. The method of claim 1 that that includes applying a facial recognition function as a consequence of said deciding.

7. The method of claim 1 that that includes applying a watermark decoding function as a consequence of said deciding.

8. The method of claim 1 that includes receiving the image data from a camera system of a mobile phone device.

9. The method of claim 1 that further includes using said determined metric in deciding which of said plural image recognition processes not to invoke.

10. A mobile phone including a processor and a memory, the memory containing non-transitory software instructions causing the processor to perform the method of claim 1.

11. A computer readable storage medium having stored therein non-transitory software instructions, said instructions being operative to cause a mobile phone processor programmed thereby to:

analyze received image data to determine a color saturation metric or a contrast metric; and

use said determined metric in deciding which of, or in which order, plural different image recognition processes should be invoked by the mobile phone.

12. A method comprising:

analyzing received image data to determine a color saturation metric;

comparing the determined metric with a threshold value;

if the determined metric is below the threshold value, applying one or more recognition processes from a first set of processes; and

if the determined metric is above the threshold value, applying one or more recognition processes from a second set of processes different than the first.

13. The method of claim 12 that further includes, if the determined metric is below the threshold value, applying a recognition process from said second set of processes, after applying one or more recognition processes from said first set of processes.

14. The method of claim 12 in which one of said sets includes a barcode reading process, and the other of said sets includes a facial recognition process.

15. The method of claim 12 in which one of said sets includes a barcode reading process, and the other of said sets includes an object recognition process.

16. The method of claim 12 in which one of said sets includes an OCR process, and the other of said sets includes a facial recognition process.

17. The method of claim 12 in which one of said sets includes an OCR process, and the other of said sets includes an object recognition process.

18. A method comprising:

analyzing a first set of image data to compute a color saturation metric;

applying said computed color saturation metric as an input to a rule-based process to determine which of, or in which order, plural different recognition processes should be applied; and

applying the determined recognition process(es) to a set of image data.

19. The method of claim 18 that includes applying the determined recognition process(es) to the first set of image data.

20. The method of claim 18 that includes applying the determined recognition process(es) to a second set of image data different than the first set of image data.